Renowned film art director Nitin Desai was found hanged on Wednesday at his ND studios in the Raigad district of Maharashtra. As police investigate the case, our sources revealed that “no suicide note was found, however there was an audio recording. The forensic team is on it.” The art director had defaulted on a Rs 250 crore loan to his financial creditor, and a bankruptcy court had admitted an insolvency claim against his company last week.
Nitin Desai was under a huge debt
Desai’s company, ND’s Art World Pvt Ltd, had borrowed Rs 180 crore through two CFM loans. This loan agreement was signed in 2016 and 2018, and the problems with payments started in January 2020. For this, Desai had mortgaged a total of 42 acres of land. After some time, the CFM assigned all its loan accounts to the Edelweiss Asset Reconstruction Company, but even so the loan was not recovered. That is why the Edelweiss company had requested permission to act under the SARFAESI Law for the collection of debts through the confiscation of the property of the mortgaged land. This proposal was made in September of last year and is still pending. Because of this, Desai was in dire financial straits. He had also discussed this matter with Khalapur MLA Mahesh Baldi a few days ago.
According to the sources, the financial company Edelweiss was about to auction ND Studio for the recovery of the debt. About 15 years ago, Reliance bought 50 percent of the shares of ND Studio, but then Anil Ambani’s own company fell into debt, thus shattering the dream of making ND a world-class studio.
Nitin Desai was working on a web series
About a month and a half ago, Nitin Desai was very excited about his web series ‘Maharana Pratap’, for which he had a look test with Gurmeet Choudhary, for the lead star. The 30-episode series was supposed to air on Disney Hotstar.
About Nitin Desai
He made his debut as an art director in 1989 with ‘Parinda’ and went on to work on various other projects. Some of his works include ‘1942: A Love Story’ (1993), ‘Khamoshi: The Musical’ (1995), ‘Pyaar To Hona Hi Tha’ (1998), ‘Hum Dil De Chuke Sanam’ (1999), ‘Mission Kashmir’ (2000), ‘Raju Chacha’ (2000), ‘Devdas’ (2002), ‘Munnabhai MBBS’ (2003), ‘Jodhaa Akbar’ (2008), ‘Dostana’ (2008), ‘Once Upon a Time in Mumbai ‘ (2010) and ‘Prem Ratan Dhan Payo’ (2015), to name a few.
READ ALSO: Nitin Desai, art director of Lagaan and Jodhaa Akbar, committed suicide at ND Studio
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